Ex­ports for first quar­ter up $260m year-on-year

IN­TER­NA­TIONAL trade in the first quar­ter of the fi­nan­cial year was up over US$350 mil­lion com­pared to the same pe­riod in 2015, with ex­port growth driv­ing most of the in­crease, ac­cord­ing to Min­istry of Com­merce statis­tics.

Ex­ports over the first quar­ter – also the first three months un­der the Na­tional League for Democ­racy gov­ern­ment – were up $261.7 mil­lion yearon-year.

The rest of the jump in trade came from a $95.2 mil­lion rise in im­ports.

Ris­ing ex­ports help re­duce Myan­mar’s trade deficit and im­prove for­eign re­serves, said U Hla Maung, a former di­rec­tor of the Min­istry of Com­merce and now an eco­nomic ad­viser to sev­eral com­pa­nies.

Min­istry statis­tics show to­tal in­ter­na­tional trade of $5.9 bil­lion in the first quar­ter of 2016-17, com­pared with $5.54 bil­lion in the first quar­ter of the pre­vi­ous fi­nan­cial year. To­tal first-quar­ter ex­ports were $2.48 bil­lion, up from $2.21 bil­lion. First-quar­ter im­ports hit $3.42 bil­lion, up from $3.33 bil­lion.

With ex­port growth out­pac­ing the rise in im­ports Myan­mar en­joyed a mod­est re­duc­tion in its trade deficit for the first quar­ter – the deficit was $945.7 mil­lion com­pared to $1.11 bil­lion in the first quar­ter of 2015-16.

Myan­mar’s main ex­ports in­clude fish, an­i­mal, agri­cul­tural and for­est prod­ucts. Min­ing and fin­ished ma­chin­ery also im­por­tant sec­tors, al­though their share of ex­ports has been de­clin­ing.